


Monsters

by BleakBlueJay



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: 1950s, Abduction, Blood, F/F, Female Protagonist, Kidnapping, Language Barrier, Possessive Behavior, Pre-entity, Russia, Slow Burn, Stalking, and to be honest im worried i can't add chapters to this, concerned about all of that wish me luck, hi guys this is my first fic, i dont know how to write them or tag them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26836000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleakBlueJay/pseuds/BleakBlueJay
Summary: A young Russian woman from a secluded village leaves her home to get medicine for her sick little sister, and finds herself being stalked and hunted by a mysterious figure that lives in the Red Forest. She tells herself there are no such things as monsters and hags and bodarks, and is sorely mistaken.
Relationships: Anna | The Huntress & Reader, Anna | The Huntress & You, Anna | The Huntress/Original Female Character(s), Anna | The Huntress/You, Huntress - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 60





	Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy the first part of this story! It's my first fanfic, and honestly the first time I've written anything beyond a couple notebook pages in actual years. Let me know if you have any comments or critiques! Thank you.

Growing up, we were told never to enter the Red Forest by ourselves. If we did, we risked being stolen by a terrifying beast and never seen again - and fair enough, sometimes the people who went into the forest to travel to the city or go hunting never came back. While I maintained some cynicism, I still never,  _ ever _ crossed the treeline by myself. Whenever I gathered firewood or I took a basket with me to pick wild berries with my sisters, I told myself that there were no such things as monsters, especially not ones that donned masks and hunted people. When we heard about the camps of enemy soldiers found dead and massacred, I chalked it up to hungry wolves or bears. There are no such things as monsters.

And that’s exactly what I kept repeating to myself as I stepped into the Red Forest alone for the first time. My family was short desperately on medicine, and my youngest sister was growing sicker by the day. With everyone else in the house tasked with taking care of her, working at the family tailor shop, or helping with the harvest (this year was a big one!), I was the only one left for the job. My mother gave me a map of how to get to the city through the trails, a basket of food for the trip, a wad of crumpled rubles, and a dull hunting knife before shoving me out the door and wishing me well. It was an easy task, and if I didn’t dally, it wouldn’t take more than two days.

Half an hour into my fear-filled mantra ( _ no such thing as monsters, no such thing as monsters...)  _ and cautious walking, I started to calm down. The more time that passed in which I wasn’t slain by some legendary beast, the less I was afraid of it. The Red Forest was beautiful, even. The canopy was filled with the songs of talented birds and rustling squirrels. Sometimes pale little rabbits sprinted across the dirt road and disappeared into the overgrowth. I felt peace.

Right on schedule, I got to the small city on the other side of the forest, bought the medicine, stayed the night in the inn, and started on my way back, bright and early. I no longer had anything to fear. I conquered the Red Forest. It was mine, now. This morning was a lot quieter than yesterday’s, though. No bird song, no rabbits. Maybe I was up a little too early and all the woodland animals were still busy sleeping. To break the eerie silence, I started to sing to myself.

It was a song I grew up with, a song all the village children grow up with. It was a song sung to us by our babas to warn us of sleeping too close to the edge of the bed, or a wolf would drag us into the forest and gobble us up. I don’t know why I chose this song, and after a few lines I started creeping myself out, and my song weakened to a whisper, then a murmur, then to nothing.

I didn’t notice at first, but the forest was no longer silent. After a few moments, I realized that I was still hearing the song being sung. I froze. No, it wasn’t my echo, for sure. It sounded like a woman’s voice, deep and maybe a little ragged. It filled the air, the words swirling all around me, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The longer I stood still, the louder and closer the singing got. 

“There are no such things as monsters,” I whispered under my breath. “No such thing as monsters.”

A laugh interrupted the song. A quiet, smug chuckle. It felt like it was right in my ear. In that moment, survival instincts took over, and I bolted into the forest. I swear my feet barely touched the ground as I fled. I kept running and running, leaping over fallen branches and vaulting over stones. Eventually, the singing trailed off and I was alone in the silence of the forest again.

Except, I was lost now. In my panic, I must have ran off the road and into unfamiliar,  _ unmapped _ territory. Worry set in. I needed to get this medicine to my sister soon, I needed shelter before night fell, I needed safety. 

Starting back the way I thought I came, I got even more lost. None of the trees I passed looked familiar. A few times as I walked, I swore I heard the humming again between the rustles of the trees, but it was hard to tell where reality and paranoia began and ended. The sun was beginning to go down now, and the forest was getting cold. 

How lucky I must have been when I found the outline of cobblestone peeking out from beneath decades of dirt and treefall. A road. Roads mean people and people mean safety. Just as I began to follow it, the singing approached again. Not willing to risk getting lost again this close to night, I slunk down into a bush and crouched with my basket held tightly to my chest. I slid the hunting knife out and held it tightly until my knuckles were white, and I waited.

A tall figure moved past me. It was a massive humanoid shape, muscular and wrapped in a filthy, ripped woolen dress. Children’s toys and charms hung off her hip, colourful and vibrant against the earth tones and beige of the dress. Moving my eyes up, I realized that the head of the figure was a bear. A rotting bear skull with teeth exposed, mandible hanging low and broken. It was a bodark. It had to be a bodark. A human that took the shape of predatory animals at will. A monster. 

Fear froze my blood. The shape hummed as it walked past me, massive axe gripped in large, calloused hands. My knife wouldn’t be able to do anything against it. I was powerless. I was at the mercy of God. For a moment, it looked like the bodark knew I was there, and was considering snatching me out of the bush. But it didn’t. It left. Quiet once again. Time to keep walking.

It grew dark. Soon, the warm, red evening would melt into pitch black night. Even if monsters  _ weren’t _ real, predators were, and the wilderness was rife with them. Peeking through the leaves above me, I saw a column of black smoke, characteristic of that from a chimney. Finally, I must have found a forester or a huntsman! Any fear I held for strangers melted away as the desire for safety overpowered me and broke me into a sprint. 

As I approached the house, some of my optimism faded again. It was large, but it was old and poorly kept. Planks were partially rotted and became impromptu windows, and entrances for vermin. The roof had partway fallen away. Of course, beggars can’t be choosers, and I would easily pick bad shelter over no shelter. I hazarded a knock on the door, broken and hung awkwardly off its rusted hinges. 

No answer.

No time to wait.

Whatever the owner of the home might think to find a young woman breaking into his home did not matter at this moment. I opened the door and invited myself in. Instantly upon opening the door, I was savaged by the worst stench I have ever had the misfortune of smelling. I did not see what was making the smell at first, but after a few steps, it became clear. It was rotting meat. Across a dining room table, lit by the mischievous dancing glow of the hearthfire, there was an elk split open, partially butchered and left to sit to open air for God knows how long. 

“Hello?” I called out, covering my nose to block the scent of death. “I am sorry to break-in, I am lost!”

Still no answer. Maybe the hunter was still hunting. I took a seat in a threadbare chair and looked around. Above the hearth, there was a family portrait that looked maybe twenty to thirty years old. It was a sweet portrait, but it was sad to think it was never updated in so many years, and it was so faded. I wondered where the family could be now. My eyes lingered on the decoration -- made of bone, antler, fur, and gnarled wood. It evoked imagery of folk tales that Mama and Baba used to tell me before bed. Despite the disrepair, the home was enchanting.

Some time passed without anyone coming home, and the air grew colder. I shivered beneath my shawl and drew it closer around me. I guessed I should just make myself at home. There was still some bread left in my basket, and I rummaged through the kitchen for anything to have with it. Lots of meat. A hunter  _ had _ to have owned this house. I enjoyed a fine supper, better than I’d eaten in a long while. 

Boredom took me, and curiosity. The hunter was still not home, and I was getting tired. I crept up the creaking, groaning stairs to find a bed to curl up in. I took my first left into a small bedroom and gasped with horror at what I saw.

A little girl was chained to the wall of the room, skinny and frail. Her green pinafore dress was filled with holes and falling off her bones. Her eyes sunken, her cheeks gaunt. Her wrists were bruised around the shackles that could almost slip effortlessly off, her wrists were so thin. There was a serene expression on her motionless face, like she was only sleeping. Frost had bitten her fingers, toes, and nose black. 

Upon this sight, my stomach churned. I resisted the urge to vomit, to cry, to scream, and just stood there as still as her. This poor girl. She looked just like my little sister, and my fear of what would become of her without her medicine took me to my knees. I knew that at this moment, she was curled up in bed coughing and getting thinner. She couldn’t keep her food down, and she couldn’t stay warm. This was the visage of what would happen to her if I couldn’t get back home. I held the child corpse’s frozen hand for a moment. 

_ SLAM! _

Brought back to my senses, I flinched away from the body and perked my ears. Someone was home. Someone was angry. Someone was singing. The same voice that sang to me earlier filled the house in an impatient, almost growling cacophony. There were some crashes downstairs, things moving around, and soon the stairs creaked and the song grew louder. In a panic, I threw myself into a nearby cupboard and hid.

Between the small ornate carved holes in the cupboard holes, I could make out the shape of the bodark. A monster I told myself didn’t exist. A monster that stood right in front of me.

It crouched in front of the child’s corpse and nudged it. It didn’t  _ speak _ , so much as used encouraging sounds, like a hopeful  _ get up, rise and shine! _ After no response, it unshackled the corpse, threw the body over its shoulder, and carried it out. The humming started back up, but sadder this time. Disappointed. Finally, the front door opened, closed, and I was once again alone in the house. 

A wave of relief washed over me and I felt like I could breathe again. It was short-lived, though, as I realized my basket was no longer on me. I must have left it downstairs! I had to grab it and get out, go home, get away. As much as I feared the dark and what it might bring, I feared the den of a bodark far worse. The courage took a long minute to summon, but once it welled within me, I bolted downstairs to find the basket.

But it wasn’t there.

My basket wasn’t where I left it. 

The monster moved it. It  _ had _ to have moved my basket. That means it had to know I was here. It must have known I was hiding and that I was nearby. And that maybe I would want the basket back. It was hard to accept, and I writhed in denial as I looked under the chair and the table and the kitchen and by the doorway, but it wasn’t there, and soon the monster would be. 

In my blur of panic, I somehow still spotted an escape route. A window on the backside of the house was open and was just big enough for me to squeeze through. As I started crawling out the window headfirst, the front door opened again behind me.  _ Hurry! _ I scrambled and tried to throw myself out the rest of the window.  _ Hurry or you’re dead! _

Before I could get out all the way, something tugged at my leg, hard. I sunk my fingernails into the wooden wall and kept trying to pull myself out. The tugs were harder, stronger. They became drags as they successfully pulled me back inside. My nails broke and tore under the pressure of gripping fruitlessly onto the wooden panelling, and eventually I lost my grip entirely, at the mercy of the bodark.

It gripped me by my braid, pulling my head back to get a better look at me while its other strong hand pinned me roughly against the wall. While it got a better look at me, I got a better look at  _ it _ , too. It wasn’t an it, at all. It was a woman. And she was beautiful. 

I know that’s weird to say about a monster, one that hunted me and that starved that poor child. But it was undeniable. Peeking from beneath what I now understood was a bear mask, not a bear head,, she had a strong, oval face and a set of very human eyes, a dark walnut brown. Her lips were curled into a smug grin, accentuated by her frost-eaten lip that left her mouth in a permanent, crooked sneer. The expression on her face was one I had seen dogs make when they corner a game animal in a hunt. 

“Let me go,” I pleaded, weakly as though my terror had caught in my throat. “I need to go home, let me go.”

If she could understand me, she didn’t show it.. She unpinned me from the wall and dragged me upstairs by my braid. My yelps of protest and pain did not slow her, did not stop her. She brought me into the room where I found the corpse and shoved me into the ground. Before I could recover and attempt escape, the shackles were already on me, and I was trapped. She laughed at me,  _ laughed _ , and left the room. It was quiet now, and cold.


End file.
